The Second Con-ALMA Forum in San Antonio brought together professionals and community leaders to explore Mexican-American identity, emphasizing its formation through family, culture, and lived experiences across generations. The event highlighted the importance of Mexican-American voices in telling their own stories and placing their experiences at the center of broader cultural and historical narratives.
- The forum was organized by ALMA, MAPA, and the Mexican Consulate in San Antonio and held at the Mexican Cultural Institute.
- Three panels discussed identity and belonging, the role of families in preserving culture, and representation of Mexican-American experiences.
- Speakers stressed that Mexican-American identity is shaped by families, traditions, memories, and everyday life rather than just geography or labels.
- Family recipes and stories were highlighted as key ways to preserve and pass down cultural heritage.
- Participants called for Mexican-American experiences to be recognized as central to the larger historical narrative.
The Con-Alma Forum Centered the Voices and Experiences of Families Whose Histories Connect Mexico and the United States
San Antonio gathered at the Mexican Cultural Institute downtown last weekend for a community conversation exploring how Mexican-American identity is formed, passed through generations and expressed through family, culture and community.
Viewers also followed the Second Con-ALMA Forum, “Identidad Mexicoamericana: Culturas e historias binacionales,” through a livestream.
The free forum was organized by ALMA, the Alliance of Mexicans and Americans, in partnership with the Mexican-American Policy Alliance (MAPA) and the Consulate of Mexico in San Antonio.
Held at the Instituto Cultural de México del Consulado de México en San Antonio, the event brought together professionals, scholars, writers, artists and community leaders whose work connects experiences on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border.
Who Gets to Tell the Story?
The first of three panels focused on identity and belonging and included writer and journalist Cecilia Ballí; Ellen Riojas Clark, professor emerita at The University of Texas at San Antonio; anthropologist María Zentella; and Alfredo Ávalos Lara of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) in San Antonio.
The conversation centered on how Mexican-American identity develops and the importance of communities having a voice in documenting their own experiences.
It falls to us to tell our own stories.
Ávalos Lara
That idea became a common thread throughout the forum: Mexican-American identity is not simply something defined by geography or labels, but something lived through families, traditions, memories and everyday experiences.
Identity Begins at Home
The second panel turned to the role families play in preserving identity from one generation to the next.
Lizzeth Martínez, ambassador chef of San Antonio, City of Gastronomy, discussed family recipes as a form of living heritage — traditions that carry family history and culture across generations.
Gabriel Quintero, president of Avenida Guadalupe Association, emphasized that preserving those experiences does not always require a formal historical project.
“We need to share the stories of our families,” Quintero said. “It’s very important and very simple to do.”
The discussion highlighted the home as one of the first places where culture is learned and preserved, through food, language, family stories, customs and traditions.
Moving Mexican-American Stories to the Center
The third panel focused on how Mexican-American culture and experiences are represented within the broader community.
Moderated by Rebeca Barrera, the discussion included writer Edna Campos Gravenhorst, who called for Mexican-American experiences to be treated as a central part of the larger historical narrative.
“We don’t belong in the back of the story. We belong in the center.”
Campos Gravenhorst
Across the three panels, speakers returned to a shared message: Mexican-American identity is lived and continually shaped, passed from one generation to another and best understood through the voices of the people and families who experience it.
In San Antonio, where generations of families have connections spanning Mexico and the United States, the forum placed those personal stories at the center of a broader conversation about culture, history and belonging.
